Optimisation of cleaning is an ongoing task in the field of hand dishwashing. Consumers utilizing liquid detergent as a liquid hand dishwashing detergent compositions require fast and effective cleaning action, odor control and hygiene.
Aqueous compositions comprising peroxygen bleach have generally been less utilized in the household dish washing detergent market, although they deliver effective bleaching performance and/or disinfecting performance. Currently liquid hand dish washing detergents are meant for greasy soil removal, but fail to some extent to effectively remove tea, coffee and red stains, red stains including tomato and red fruit stains. Thus there is a need to provide an alkaline liquid hand dish washing detergent composition that meets this need to remove bleachable stains. Thus there is a desire for a liquid hand dish washing detergent formulation containing bleach.
Primarily the instability of the peroxygen bleach is an issue in alkaline medium, usually used to formulate alkaline liquid hand dish washing detergent compositions. The peroxide bleach instability is caused principally by contamination of metal ion occurring in the composition itself and/or in wash solution obtained having diluted the composition with water. It is also well known from the literature that, hydrogen peroxide is unstable at a pH greater than 7.
It is thus objective of the present invention to provide an alkaline liquid detergent composition for hand dishwashing comprising peroxygen bleach which has effective stain removal, provides odor and hygiene control and provides superior stability during storage and use. It has surprisingly been found that the above objective can be met by the composition according to the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,187,738 discloses aqueous compositions comprising peroxygen compound for removing water and protein-type stains from fabrics and carpets. U.S. Pat. No. 5,244,593 discloses aqueous, colorless detergent compositions containing anionic and/or nonionic surfactant, oxygen bleach and metal sequestering agent. EP 0 843 001 discloses stable, aqueous alkaline peroxygen bleach-containing compounds for surface cleaning.